Why did the Rockies waste their one juiced ball on the bottom of the order?

Seriously.¬† That happened during a Miguel Olivo at-bat, Jhoulys Chacin was on deck, and light-hitting speed demon Eric Young was in the hole.¬† Save that shit for the big boys!¬† You know, the guys whose splits everyone likes to point at!

Of course this controversy occurs on a night when Coors Field yielded the fewest total hits (5) in its 16 year history.

Of course no one is asking why Lincecum didn’t walk up to home plate umpire Laz Diaz to show him his findings, maybe have him fish through his bags for more juiced balls.

Of course there’s no chance baseballs that sit out for 6-7 innings could be naturally affected by the mile high climate.¬† I’m thinking that’s probably why they needed a humidor to begin with.¬† The baseballs would sit out in the open through the course of a game and shrink.¬† That’s still going to happen if they’re exposed too long.

Of course it’s not possible one of those baseballs ends up in the hands of Jhoulys Chacin, who allows a monster home run to Pat Burrell in the 7th inning.

None of those things matter or are possible, because Tim Lincecum has muttered the truth under his breath.

Let’s just assume the Rockies were cheating (because Tim said so).¬† Why don’t more pitchers throw baseballs back to the umpire?¬† Does that make the Rockies cheaters, or does that make every pitcher who knowingly threw a “juiced ball” an idiot?

Or do they not know?¬† Is Tim Lincecum the only pitcher gifted enough to know the difference?

Just wondering.

If that was a ball that felt weird, I tip my cap to Lincecum for throwing it out of play.¬† That’s what should be done.¬† Every pitcher has the right to do so if the ball doesn’t feel right.¬† You’re not forced to throw a ball you don’t like.

Heck… If this was a case of Lincecum playing mind games, knowing a camera might be trained on him at that moment, then I tip my cap.¬† It’s genius, because it’ll have people talking.¬† It has me writing another piece on a subject I think is a waste of time.¬† It’ll have the Rockies and their fans wasting energy defending the organization.

Are you serious? Do you really believe that Lincecum was purposely calling the ball juiced because the camera was on him? Half a game out in first, pitching to a powerful Rockies team, with nine games left in the season. Yeah, Tim Lincecum totally did it knowing it would cause controversy while in the middle of a pennant race because he doesn’t have anything more important to focus on.

“Why did the Rockies waste their one juiced ball on the bottom of the order?”

Uh, because it was the first time they had a base runner? You’re over thinking this. If you want to know why people are suspicious, it’s because here are the safeguards in place:

“MLB doesn’t monitor the process in person, and Kahn said the umpires’ attendant is a Rockies employee. So what’s to prevent the Rockies from slipping in a non-humidor ball when the team needs a big rally?

‘The integrity of the manager (Jim Tracy) and coaching staff would prevent that,’ said Kahn, a former A’s employee and graduate of Oakland’s Bishop O’Dowd High School and Cal State Hayward”

Geez, you sound like a little kid writing this article. Are you a regular writer or did you win a contest at your Jr. High school? I know the writing on these blogs is juvenile, but you might think first and then write, like a couple of the other responders have noted.

Absolutely freakin ridiculous! Are you 9 years old or something? Anyone who’s watched baseball for any length of time knows that sometimes pitchers don’t like the feel of a ball (or maybe they just need a few extra seconds to think about life) and they ask for a new one. I’ve been watching baseball for 30 years and they’ve always done this. There is no implication of cheating whatsoever. And no, Lincy did not say “juiced ball” under his breath. He said “new ball”. On to the next story…

Anon, I don’t think your lip-reading skills are very good. It look like he said, “it’s bulls****” after and “f****in” before. It’s not like he just said “juiced/new ball”. It seems to me he said, “F****in’ juiced ball(s), it’s bullshit”. The context supports “juiced” over “new”. Furthermore you can clearly see the pronounced J and C, and “ed” sounds coming out of Lincecum’s mouth.

A former MLB player has been talking about this for weeks. (He is a player who acknowledged stealing/relaying signs when an active player. See the book “The Code: Baseball’s Unwritten Rules and Its Ignore-at-Your-Own-Risk Code of Conduct”)

Its been such a hot topic among teams that the Dodger players, who have a huge rivalry with the Giants, brought this up to the Giants, asking what they knew, in the last Giants/Dodger series.

The potential mechanism for this is as follows. Before a game, Umps rub down a few dozen balls and leave them in a bag. Umps are given these balls about 8-10 at a time. When they run low, the ball boys bring bring them more. The theory is that there is a second source of balls in the Rockies dugout (where these pre-rubbed “humidor” balls are kept). Usually later in games, the mix of balls the umpire gets include more juiced balls when the Rockies are up, less when the opposition is batting. (because the ump never completely runs out, you could never ensure your team has all dry balls to hit with certainty)

Remember baseball is a game with a cheating code. Nearly anything goes, within certain unwritten rules that the players abide by. They still steal signs, often use field cheats to transmit signs to the hitter (Bobby Thompson’s “shot heard round the world” was hit on a pitch with a transmitted stolen sign from the Score board, as a famous example) They did speed in the 70’s, corked bats, and more. (The HOF has a Babe Ruth corked bat, although not marked as such) Even “spit” balls are still thrown (nowadays, grease balls (KY jelly, etc.), such as what Zambrano has been throwing, if you watch him pitch his last few starts.)

As noted, the White Sox used to use dead balls, although that applied to both teams, grass is cut short, let grow long, infields made muddy, mounds made rounder or less round, etc. Any advantage a team can get is done. That is why Steroids were so common …. and remember even the pitchers took them, to get more velocity (ever see a picture of Eric Gage?)

The unwritten code is when you get caught, just stop doing it, neither side makes a big deal of it.

So this humidor issue is a theory that has been whispered for several years. It has gotten to be a discussion topic with all visiting teams recently.

Whether the Rockies do this all year, or only in September, or only in games they are behind late, no one knows until they get “caught” red handed. But NL West teams have had binoculars trained on the Rockies dugouts for the last month.

There is a lot more to this story than a simple Lincecum lip read on national TV. What is different is the media is getting involved, rather than it being a “open secret” among the teams, like most cheating that goes on. Just quit when you get caught, and no one really cares what you do. Its a game inside the game.

Trantor, you’re comments are right on. If the Rockies can get an advantage from lax MLB oversight of their mile-hile balls than they will (and should) use that advantage. This isn’t a gentlemen’s game of tennis. With baseball you do what you need to do to win. Its not against the unwritten rules of baseball to steal signs, throw at players, or spike. A few years ago it wasn’t against the unwritten rules to use steriods. And it wouldn’t break the unwritten rules to dry out a few balls, put them in the bag, and then let their team’s own employee feed those balls into a game at opportune times. It could be as simple as the ball boy grabbing from the bottom of the bag when the opposing team is batting and top of the bag when Rockies are up. Balls on top of the bag are gonna dry out quicker anyway because more surface area is exposed to outside air. The simplest cheats are the best cheats.

The Rockies stats speak for themselves. A home power boost in one thing, but for the Rockies it’s a massive difference for several years. And opposing teams don’t experience a similiar boost. The stats raise eyebrows.

Baseball is a game of averages. I don’t think the Rockies could get a juiced ball into a game at a precise moment. But they don’t need to. Over the couse of a season you insert a couple balls a game that 70% of the time get thrown to Rockies batters…with thousands of home at bats a season that’s a recipe to pick-up 3-5 extra wins a season. And that can mean a playoff birth.

Its hard to get caught because the difference in balls is so subtle. Rockies pitchers might get a sense over years of experience at Coors field but for visiting pitchers it’s extremely hard to spot. Remember that in 2002 when the Rockies started using the humidor they didn’t tell their players or the MLB front office about it. Several weeks later the organization announced they had been playing with humidor balls–the players hadn’t caught onto this on their own. They had to be told because the naked eye doesn’t pick it up.

Why might Lincecum have noticed? A mixture of luck and it being on his radar. Maybe even his teammate Affeldt (a former Rockie who has been quoted saying he can tell the difference) gave Tim a little leason on the tells of a dry ball.

I don’t know if the Rockies are doing it but it’s certainly not crazy to suspect. Anyone saying it’s impossible is either naive or a blind defender of the Rockies. Asking questions about this is no crazier than a casino wondering if the guy getting blackjacks every other hand all night long is counting cards.

Ummm, you “waste” the juiced ball on the bottom of the order because those are the guys who need the advantage. Tulo and Cargo can hit any ball out of the yard, so using a juiced ball on them would be the true waste.

And what about a Rockies employee pulling an extra base hit out of play today? That’s legitimate? Maybe the sample size is too small to establish a pattern. But given all the other stuff that goes on in baseball, it’s naive to think the Rockies wouldn’t cheat if they got the chance. Technically their use of the humidor at all is cheating since they didn’t clear it with MLB. Don’t forget how badly the Rockies S**ked until they got this humidor, now they can use it to their advantage because Bud Selig is a steroid-loving moron.

Why the Rockies didn’t alert MLB to the humidor at first is beyond my comprehension. That was a weird move, but the humidor has obviously been approved since then, so it’s really technically just a device that preserves baseballs in their natural state. Also known as not cheating.

After that almost good point you went haywire. The Rockies actually had FOUR winning seasons in the nine seasons pre-humidor, and 2010 represents their THIRD winning season in nine years with the humidor. In the five seasons right after the humidor was installed, the Rockies never won more than 76 games. That’s not good.

I appreciate your attempt to rewrite history, but the likely real reason the Rockies have had success the past four seasons is that they actually developed and acquired talented players.

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